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Confused About Differential Signaling? Check out this quick snippet of the Altium Podcast with guru of high speed design Lee Ritchey The primary reason that differential signaling is dominating the digital world is that far higher data bandwidths can be achieved over a pair of wires than with parallel, single-ended signaling protocols. The Internet as we know it would not be possible without differential signaling. This information is intended to clear up any confusion about Read Article

Everything You Need for Successful PCB Stackup Design There are three demands placed on stackup design: controlled impedance, crosstalk control and the need for interplane capacitance. Some fabricators could get the impedance right in a stackup, but there is no way for them to account for the other two. This responsibility rests with the design engineer who is the only one who knows what is needed and how to implement the needed control. This information is intended to provide guidance on the Read Article

Noise Transfer is Annoying, Learn How to Contain Crosstalk The words crosstalk and coupling are used to describe the injection of electromagnetic energy from one transmission line to another running nearby. In printed circuit boards crosstalk is usually two traces running side by side in the same layer or one over the top of the other in adjacent layers. This coupled energy appears as noise on the victim trace and can cause malfunctions if the amplitude is too large. Learn how this noise is transferred Read Article

How to Control Switching Signals with Terminations for Best Signal Quality A transmission line is a pair of conductors used to deliver energy in the form of an electromagnetic field. Most of us are familiar with the wires that lead to our houses to deliver the power needed to operate our lights and appliances. In the context of PCB design, it is a signal in a signal layer on top of a plane or between two planes. TRANSMISSION LINES AND TERMINATIONS The purpose of this section is to explain what transmission lines are Read Article

Building Your Treasure Trove of Component Information Learn about PCB data Management and how it interrelates to the PCB Design process and roles of everyone involved. According to the business dictionary, a process is defined as: “A sequence of interdependent and linked procedures which, at every stage, consume one or more resources (employee time, energy, machines, money) to convert inputs (data, material, parts, etc.) into outputs. These outputs then serve as inputs for the next stage until a Read Article

Systems and Structures to Avoid the Sound of Deadlines Whooshing By Adopt the SMART rules of PCB Data Management and avoid additional cost and/or lost design time. When we begin to look in more detail at how to do anything, it becomes a little problematic. The reason is that every organization varies in product, structure and management requirements. We can guarantee that there will not be a “single” answer or solution to the questions at hand. My intention therefore is not to prescribe a sole structure or Read Article

Drinking From the Firehose of PCB Data There are several problems that are directly impacting the PCB Design area and specifically the PCB Data Management. For some time, it has not been business as usual, it is vital to understand these issues and develop a good strategy to handle them. With the invention of the internet, civilization dragged itself (sometimes kicking and screaming) out of the industrial age and into the “Information Age”, as an official description of the 21st Read Article

The Brave New World of PCB Data Management PCB Data Management is the acquisition, storage, verification, usage, distribution and maintenance of all the data connected to the development of printed circuit boards or PCBs In what some refer to as the “Olden Days” of the Electronics industry, it was definitely a different time. There wasn’t much need for PCB Data, let alone anything to manage it with. Tasks such as creating schematics, BOMs, drawings, and gerber files were problematic at Read Article

What's Different in HDI? Defining Interconnect Density When planning an HDI design, there are measures of performance or metrics for the HDI process. Like the triangle in the Figure 1, these three vital chains of the HDI Process are elements of interconnection density. FIGURE 1. HDI Design Metrics Assembly Complexity Two measures of the difficulty to assemble surface mounted components, Component Density (Cd),measured in parts per square inch (or per square centimeter.) Read Article

Get to Know Microvia Manufacturing Processes and HDI Substrates Initial HDI Fabrication High Density Interconnect printed circuits actually started in 1980, when researchers started investigating ways to reduce the size of vias. The first innovator is not known, but some of the earliest pioneers include Larry Burgess of MicroPak Laboratories (developer of LaserVia), Dr. Charles Bauer at Tektronix (who produced photodielectric vias), [1] and Dr. Walter Schmidt at Contraves (who developed plasma-etched vias) Read Article

11 HDI Materials You Need to Know In this article we will discuss the materials used to manufacture HDI circuits. Several good resources exist on the subject of materials for PCBs (such as the Printed Circuit Handbook edited by Holden & Coombs) so we will concentrate on those materials that are specific to HDI. Materials for HDI The current HDI materials market worldwide was estimated by BPA Consulting Ltd. to be 83 million square meters. The breakdown by BPA Consulting of the Read Article

Introduction to High Density Interconnects and the Evolution of Electronics The Evolution of Electronics Electronics is a relatively new industry, since it has been only 65 years since the transistor was invented. The radio tube was developed nearly 100 years ago but blossomed in WWII, with communications, radar, ammunition fusing (especially the radar-altimeter electronic fusing for the first atom bomb) and has evolved into the world largest industry. All electronic components must be interconnected and assembled to Read Article

How Does the Cloud Change the DFX Process? Let’s face it: Engineers rarely design modern board systems on their own. However, it didn’t use to be that way. Not long ago, engineers primarily focused on form, fit, and function. Addressing those requirements was extremely difficult on its own. Constraints on cost, power, or part availability were secondary concerns. The prime directive was to get it to work. Fast forward to today, and the focus has flipped. It is a given that board systems Read Article

Layer Management as a Design Tool Priority Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the same could be said for printed circuit boards. PCBs are similar to cities in that they contain pathways connecting components. Components have dimension into the surrounding air space, as well as into the thickness of the board itself. Hidden subsystems similar to underground wiring and cityscape piping reside within the thickness of the boards. Printed circuit boards mimic cities with their layers of Read Article

Design Rules to Fanout a Large BGA I have known people during my career who insisted on hand-routing every PCB design that they worked on. They would say that their manual routing performed better, looked better, and was just better in general. I’m not going to argue one way or the other on that, but I will say that there is one thing that can not be argued with; all of that manual routing took them a much longer time to complete then if they had used automated routers. With today Read Article

Electronic Components Shortages, Insights from John Watson Electronic Components Shortages, or part shortages are so big that it impacts nearly every aspect of electronics design and manufacture. Lead times continue to rise no matter how fast parts are being produced. It is just not possible for production to catch up. The reality of this current shortage means it’s time to be innovative, and guest John Watson has some ideas to help including an expert tip Altium Designer users can put to good use. (Hint Read Article

Using an IPC-2152 Calculator: Designing to Standards I work with a hardware startup that is working on new light sources for microscopic imaging. The visionaries abound and several talented people are working to make the devices into promising prototypes. But even in this early stage, there has been little talk of designing the product according to industry standards. While it may seem like a simple requirement, knowing the temperature rise and current carrying capacity in your PCB are outlined in Read Article